Today in History, January 6th
On January 6, 1941, FDR set out the Four Freedoms in his message to Congress. Plus New Mexico statehood and the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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January 6 is best known for 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid out the “Four Freedoms” in his annual message to Congress. The date also saw New Mexico become the 47th state in 1912 and a mob attack the U.S. Capitol during the counting of electoral votes in 2021.
The big story: FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech (1941)
In January 1941, the U.S. was officially neutral, but one European nation after another had fallen to Hitler. On January 6, Roosevelt used his State of the Union address to the new 77th Congress to argue that helping Britain was in America’s own interest. He proposed supplying weapons to nations resisting aggression, to be repaid in goods after the war rather than in cash. He also described the kind of world he hoped would follow, built on four basic human freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. The phrase stuck. Norman Rockwell painted a series on the four freedoms for The Saturday Evening Post, and the images toured the country to sell war bonds. After the war, Eleanor Roosevelt drew on the same ideas while championing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948.
More events on January 6
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1066 | Harold Godwinson was crowned King Harold II of England after the death of Edward the Confessor. |
| 1540 | Henry VIII married Anne of Cleves, having seen only her portrait before they met. The marriage was annulled within months. |
| 1759 | George Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis. |
| 1777 | Washington set up the Continental Army’s winter headquarters at Morristown, New Jersey. |
| 1838 | Samuel Morse demonstrated his electric telegraph. |
| 1912 | New Mexico was admitted to the Union as the 47th state. |
| 1919 | Former president Theodore Roosevelt died at his Sagamore Hill estate. |
| 1942 | A month after Pearl Harbor, FDR announced the biggest armaments production program in U.S. history. |
| 1975 | The game show Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC. |
| 1994 | Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked at a Detroit ice rink shortly before the U.S. Olympic trials. |
| 2001 | Vice President Al Gore presided over the joint session of Congress that certified George W. Bush’s win in the 2000 election. |
| 2021 | A mob of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the certification of the 2020 electoral votes. Congress resumed after the building was cleared and confirmed Joe Biden’s win early the next morning. |
Born on January 6
- 1878: Carl Sandburg, American poet, born in Galesburg, Illinois.
- 1883: Khalil Gibran, Lebanese-born poet and artist, born in Bsharrī, Lebanon.
- 1955: Rowan Atkinson, English comic actor, born in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Sources
- President Franklin Roosevelt’s Annual Message (Four Freedoms) to Congress (1941), National Archives
- Franklin D. Roosevelt speaks of Four Freedoms, History.com
- This Day in History: January 6, History.com
- New Mexico joins the Union, History.com
- January 6 Capitol riot, History.com
- Carl Sandburg, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Khalil Gibran, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Rowan Atkinson, Encyclopaedia Britannica
